Letter 293a

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
Letter 293a
Recipient	Dick Plotz
Date	Late 1966 to early 1967
Subject(s)	Quenya grammar

Letter 293a is a letter written by J.R.R. Tolkien and published in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien: Revised and Expanded edition.

The letter is commonly referred to as The Plotz Letter and it was first published in Vinyar Tengwar 6.

The chart included at the end of the letter is commonly referred to as 'The Plotz Declension' and was first published in Tolkien Language Notes Issue 2 (1974), and was later reprinted in Beyond Bree March 1989, Vinyar Tengwar 6 (1989), Vinyar Tengwar 11 (1990), Basic Quenya (1992), and in Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference (1995).

The chart can be found on the Quenya grammar page.

Summary

Plotz had interviewed Tolkien in November 1966 for the magazine Seventeen and much of the discussion was around his invented languages.

In this letter Tolkien provided detailed information about the declensions in Quenya for the words cirya ('ship') and lasse ('leaf'). Tolkien explained that the forms he shared represent "Classical" or Book Quenya (BQ), the written form known to the Númenórean scholars and those in Gondor during the Third Age. He noted that Quenya was never a spoken language among Men but was preserved by Elves, particularly those of Noldorin origin, as a learned second language in places like Rivendell and Lórien.

Tolkien described how Quenya evolved among the Noldor before it ceased being a native tongue and became a learned language. This colloquial form of Quenya, though no longer a birth language, was preserved from further change by being taught anew from written texts each generation. He highlighted differences between Spoken Quenya (SQ) and Book Quenya (BQ), such as the reduction of all long vowels to short vowels in specific contexts.